AT&T Partners up with Magic Leap, a Startup Working on Mixed Reality

AT&T announced a partnership with Magic Leap on Wednesday. Magic Leap is a start up which works on products based on ‘Mixed Reality’.

Magic Leap showed off its first product, called the “Magic Leap One,” last year after much hype and mystery. It is a so-called mixed reality headset that is connected to a small computer you wear on your hip.

It is a breakthrough in technology as most of the VR headsets need to be tethered to a unportable PC. The product also comes with controllers. The headset is called “Lightwear” and the portable power and processing pack is called the “Lightpack.”

Folks at AT&T definitely found this interesting and decided to invest in the startup. An AT&T spokesperson told CNBC that the deal includes an equity investment in Magic Leap and a retail partnership. However, AT&T declined to say how much it invested in Magic Leap.

AT&T said its customers will be “among the first to experience” it in select stores in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with more markets to follow.

Magic Leap has raised over $2 billion in funding from investors including Google, J.P. Morgan and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. It has also struck partnerships with the NBA to allow people to watch basketball games once the headset is available, and LucasFilm, the company behind the “Star Wars” franchise.

AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan, said in a press release on Wednesday – “We’re designing and offering the future of entertainment and connectivity, and this exclusive arrangement – in combination with our 5G leadership position – will open up new opportunities and experiences.”

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, collectively called as Mixed Reality, depend upon high speed data transfer from the internet. And today’s Mobile Data (LTE) isn’t fast enough. Hopefully, telecom companies are looking and researching in 5G internet, the next gen super fast Mobile data which will solve most of these problems.